Michael Mullins, professor of biology, was one of the subjects of an article in The Scientist on the discovery, isolation, and implications of the “midbody,” a component of cell division. Landmark work by Mullins and others highlighted in the article has played a key role in helping scientists understand how the cell divides, an underlying problem of many diseases and medical processes.See the article below.

One Man's Trash...

Scientists who dared to waste their time looking at the midbody, a remnant of cell division, have catapulted the organelle to new prominence.

... Michael Mullins was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1970s when he came across Byers’s descriptions of the midbody. “I was fascinated, because I never realized there was a structure post-furrow,” says Mullins, now a professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Like Byers, Mullins turned to cutting-edge imaging technologies and observed the waves of motion along the intercellular bridge before it broke. He also reported that the bridge constricted down to a small diameter prior to snapping, a process now considered to be an important step in abscission. ...